Forgotten
by Azul Tigress
Summary: Hidden by a greater man’s shadow. Thoughtlessly discarded. Nothing more than a red, white and blue joke. But Mr Boy may have the last laugh yet...


**Forgotten**

A/N: Seducing Reason said there should be more fics on the secondary _Sky High_ characters. This is what I came up with in response to her quasi-challenge.

_Disclaimer_: Need I even tell you that I don't own _Sky High_? All intellectual property associated with the movie belongs to the House of Mouse.

Warning: contains Dark!Mr Boy…

* * *

"Whoa… Almost thought I was a goner there, kid." 

The still body of the geokinetic villain, Mudlocke, lay a couple of feet away from us. My head was so full of adrenalin and residual fear that I couldn't bring myself to say anything in reply. I had really thought that he was going to die, trapped beneath an unrelenting landslide, buried under tons of earth. It had filled me with a cold, all-consuming terror that I had never felt before.

My shaky knees were still knocking together as I helped the Commander to his feet. He clasped my hand in silent gratitude and I could actually hear my bones creak.

I remember it all so acutely, I just have to close my eyes and I can smell the damp mud clinging to his costume. See the look of sheer relief in his eyes. Relive how we entered the town amid an explosion of flashbulbs and adulation, Mudlocke shackled in neutraliser cuffs and casually slung over the Commander's shoulder like a rag doll.

"Commander! You saved the city!" a suitably excitable female news reporter gushed, pushing her way through the crowd. She elbowed me aside and thrust a microphone under his nose, visibly melting under the Commander's dazzlingly white smile.

"I'm afraid I can't take the credit on this one. It was all down to All-American Boy… my partner."

All eyes suddenly were fixed on me, the television cameras pointing in my direction, the microphone swiftly swivelling around.

That day I was more than a sidekick. I was his _partner_.

I was a _hero_.

How things change in two decades. When I saw Steve at Sky High's homecoming last year, he struggled to even remember my name. He then made some pompous speech about how the sidekick students who saved the school from Royal Pain were really heroes. I knew how they felt when they held that trophy between them. I had felt it too those twenty years ago during my brief day in the sun. The joy of being accepted, the overwhelming pride at being praised by such a great hero.

But I'm no longer blinded by the naiveté of youth. I knew it wouldn't last, and I was right. Here we are a year later and the system hasn't changed. For all the big speeches and promises, the dichotomy remains intact. Power placement still divides and rules. Heroes would always be heroes. Hero support would always be sidekicks. And I'm another cog in the machine, keeping the old lie alive. Misleading those deluded young hopefuls into thinking that anything they can say or do can make the slightest bit of difference.

With a familiar sense of mounting self-loathing, I sigh and put on the video that I have seen more times than I care to remember. My typical Saturday night. A bottle of cheap red wine, the Paper Lantern's set meal for one and overdosing on nostalgia.

I just can't help it. It's like some sort of addiction. I flip through my carefully compiled scrapbooks and I watch that old, grainy footage of news reports, documentaries, even the short-lived cartoon series, and I'm back there. That fresh-faced Sky High graduate, a bundle of nervous energy and enthusiasm, bursting to fight the good fight, take on the bad guys and win. And with the Commander at my side, how could I possibly do anything but?

I couldn't believe my luck when I was assigned as Steve Stronghold's hero support. We all knew Steve was destined for greatness. He was a modern-day Hercules, the ultimate golden boy. As son of the Admiral, the strongest superhero on record, he had impeccable pedigree, and he even looked set to eventually surpass his father's strength. The other sidekicks looked on in envy. They knew that Steve was going to be great, and that I would be great by association.

Steve made me. I had only ever felt truly alive when we were together. He gave me my name, my costume, my purpose.

My fingers tighten around the stem of my wine glass. That patronising name, All-American _Boy_, even though I'm almost a year older than him. That humiliating costume, with it's tight, little shorts exposing my skinny, pasty thighs, a vicious parody of the sleek contours of his own outfit. He seemed determined to put me in my place from the outset, as if I needed reminding that I was less of a hero than he was. Less of a man.

But I couldn't see any of that then. I was so happy to be the Commander's sidekick and so pathetically desperate to please. I begged for scraps of his affection by doing everything he asked of me. Steve was everything I wanted to be. Brave, brilliant and glorious. He was my world.

Then he snatched it all away from me in the blink of an eye. He left me, literally dangling, to team up with Jetstream, not giving me a second thought.

I don't blame Josie for that. How could I? She's the most incredible woman I've ever known. I didn't need to be saved from Royal Pain to realise how special she was. I used to watch her as she cut through the air effortlessly, a shooting star lighting up the sky. But Steve was never short of female attention when we were at school and he was preoccupied with other, pushier girls back then. No, it's not her fault that Steve discarded me like a piece of trash.

In those wilderness years before I took up teaching, I started to archive clippings from our glory days. I collected video footage of our battles. I even sent Steve one of my scrapbooks to remind him how good we were together. A sidekick without a hero is like a ship without a rudder and I was lost without him, not knowing where to turn next. I couldn't imagine being anything other than a sidekick. _His_ sidekick. I didn't want anyone else, but I advertised my freelance services in the classifieds of the superhero periodicals to an underwhelming response.

I realised what a joke I had become when I read _Hero Today's _piece about me in their 'Where Are They Now?' section. That article didn't find its way into my scrapbooks, but I remember every soul-shrivelling, venomous word. _From All-American Hero to All-American Zero: The Boy's Rise and Fall_. The magazine printed unflattering pictures of me opening supermarkets and wrote about the time I had to be rescued by the Maxville Metropolis Fire Department when I tried to get a cat down from a tree and got stuck. It was a cheap shot. Ex-sidekicks are easy pickings. But you have to develop thick skin if you want to survive. It's a statistic that the International Confederation of Metahumans doesn't advertise, but the suicide rate among sidekicks is disproportionately high, even higher than that of villains' henchmen.

The final insult came when I discovered that Steve hadn't even told his son about me. The boy summed up what Steve thought of me with one vacant look.

I was nothing to him.

I gulp down another glass of wine and it leaves a bitter, vinegar taste in my mouth that no amount of Szechuan beef can remove. I don't care that sweet and sour sauce spills onto my shirt as I dunk a fried chicken ball into the polystyrene container. It's not as if I ever have any visitors. I close my eyes and block out the shabby-looking living room with its floral seventies wallpaper curling at the edges. Sometimes I feel like these walls are closing in on me. Without the comforting background drone of the television, the house would be like a tomb. This isn't living, it's just existing. Everyday is a new, unending torment. I get up. I go to work. I go home and I think about the past.

My eyes snap open at the sound of the doorbell. It's late and I'm not expecting anyone. I never expect anyone. As I pull the door open, the sight on my doorstep turns my mouth dry.

_Her!_

"B-but how…"

"Do you really think there's any prison on the planet that could hold me?" she asks, raising an eyebrow. "I always think of _every_ eventuality."

A lamp sputters in the street behind her. With a lazy click of her fingers, the flickering instantly stops and it shines brightly, lighting up her face. Sue Tenny… Gwen Grayson… She has known me in two lives - as a peer and as a pupil. As both Sue and Gwen, she was always quite brilliant. An intellect of epic proportions, her technopathy was unrivalled. But whereas I always knew that I had reached my limits by being a sidekick, Sue was squashed by the system, stifled, rejected and mocked. Her resentment manifested itself as Royal Pain years before mine took shape.

"W-why are you…"

She interrupts me again. "Why else? You're more valuable than you think, Jonathan."

Of course. I have standing in the hero community, such as it is. I have inside knowledge of her archenemy's strengths and weaknesses.

"What makes you think I'd…"

Her beautiful, dark brown eyes hold my gaze and the rest of that sentence remains unspoken. I look away. I can't stand the way she is staring at me. Staring _into_ me.

"I know what you want most in the world, Jonathan…" Her voice is low, as seductive as silk, as sweet as cyanide. Her smile is full of promise. "…And I can help you get it."

It's a warm summer's night, but I shiver as ice-cold realisation shoots through my veins. We are the same. Steve Stronghold destroyed us both.

We both want to watch him fall.

_**End**_


End file.
